Mark Mahali presents H.772: 90-day eviction hearing deadline, fast-track for alleged dangerous tenants, habitability defense, and modest funding

Sen. Mark Mahali outlined H.772 at a briefing before the Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs committee, saying the bill is “kind of the result of about almost a year's work” with tenant and landlord advocates and aims to strike a balance between competing concerns.

Mahali told the committee that Vermont’s eviction process is unusually slow, saying “the courts estimate their target is that it should take six months, you know, to go through the process,” and that those delays discourage small, often rural, landlords who provide much of the state’s rental housing. To shorten the timeline, H.772 would generally require that the period from filing an eviction complaint to the hearing be 90 days; an earlier draft had proposed 60 days, which the Judiciary Committee extended to 90 days during its review.

Mahali said the Judiciary Committee and court leadership reviewed the bill and requested changes. “Judge Zone came to our committee and really had spent a lot of time going page by page through the bill and we made every change he suggested,” he said, describing…